Neo-traditional colour tattoo of a horse head with a curly black mane, pearl bridle and teal fabric, with a red feather, on the thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Horse portrait with feather and pearls on a thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A horse head with a curly black mane, closed eye and a purple flower in its hair is shown in grey shading with a gold and pearl bridle. Teal fabric, a purple gem and a large red feather with fine outlines fill the lower part of the design. The bold black outlines and saturated colour sit against soft grey shading on the horse's face, and the piece wraps diagonally across the thigh.

Neo-trad Thigh Horse Mane Flower Pearl Gemstone Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ada Pell oiled the brass poles of the Wintergreen Gallopers herself every October, because the men the fair hired from Hull always left a smear on the paint. This year the grey mare, Duchess, had gone lame in her near fore, and the owner wanted her sold for knacker's meat before the winter pitch in Scarborough. Ada said nothing at first. She went instead to the tin trunk under the ticket booth, where the old tack lay wrapped in tissue, and lifted out a bridle strung with seed pearls that had not been worn since her mother's time.

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The pearls were loose on their cords and the gold leather had gone stiff, so Ada sat up two nights with a lamp and a pot of neatsfoot oil, working each strand back into its little sockets. A purple glass gem at the brow had cracked along one side, and she glued it with isinglass while the kettle went cold. On the third night she sewed a fan of teal silk to the headpiece, the way the showfolk did for the procession, and pinned a red ostrich plume at its edge, the last one left in a feather box that had belonged to a woman who once rode the lead horse in a circus that no longer existed.

When the owner came round on the Friday, Duchess was standing in the centre of the platform with her mane combed out and a violet pinned behind one ear. Ada had not told him she had found a way to make the mare walk straight. He looked at the horse for a long time, then at the bridle, and said nothing about the knacker. The organ started up, the brass rang, and for the first time in a fortnight the old mare lifted her head and turned her eye toward the lamps.